Garry Davis' Blog

Visa Bulletin
 
It is rare to find someone who knows what the Visa Bulletin is and rarer still to find someone who knows what it means. One thing I can tell you with certainty is, anyone who claims to be able to predict when a visa is going to be available is lying. No one can. In this article, we will discuss what the visa bulletin is, why it exists and how to read it.
 
 The Visa Bulletin can be found here: http://travel.state.gov/visa/bulletin/bulletin_1360.html. I suggest as we go through this discussion, you click on this site so you can see what I am writing about.
 
What you will notice first is that the bulletin is published every month, generally 10-15 days before the beginning of the report month. Previous months are archived back to 1995, so if you wanted to review trends, you can go back more than 15 years to see how the numbers cycle. When you go into the report, there is some explanation of how to read the bulletin, and then the report follows. You will notice categories, countries and dates on the report. The categories correspond to the various categories of green card sponsorship – F1 being unmarried sons and daughters of US citizens who are 21 years or older, F2A being spouses and unmarried children under 21 of US residents, etc.
 
The countries are listed because natives of those nations have some categories that are “oversubscribed.” Natives of no one nation can take more than a set percentage of the total available visas for that category. Also note that the country that applies to you is the one in which you were born, regardless of citizenship. So, if you were born in India even though you are a citizen of Egypt, you will still be subject to the quota for India. The exception to that is “cross-charging,” which allows you to charge to the country of nativity for your spouse. So, even if you were born in China, you can pull from the general list if your wife was born in Nepal.
 
Sometimes you will see a “C” or “U” on the report. The C stands for current, meaning a visa is available right now. The U means the visas are gone for the year. If there is no U or C, there will be a date. The dates on the report are compared to your “priority date.” The priority date of your case is set based on the date the underlying process was started. For family cases, typically that will be the date the I-130 Petition was filed. For employment cases, it will generally be the date the labor certification or I-140 Petition was filed. That date must be earlier than the date on the report for the category applicable to that petition or labor certification. When that happens, it is time to rock and roll. And that is when we can be a really big help. If you have a current priority date for a petition, give us a call and see what we can do to help you process your case as quickly as possible.
 
 
Sincerely,
 
Garry L. Davis